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Not Applicable
This invention generally relates to the field of effects lighting and more particularly to the field of illumination sources synchronized to produce visual effects during the presentation of a multimedia presentation.
Consumers continue to demand and expect more realistic experiences while viewing multimedia program such as television, movie theaters and computer games. The realism first started with the addition of better color technologies in the 1950""s. More recently surround sound systems have beginning to proliferate in the movie theaters initially and more recently in the home market. Home theater advanced forward in the late 1980s when Dolby Laboratories introduced Dolby Surround-the home version of the Dolby Stereo that was first introduced in movie theaters back in 1977 with xe2x80x9cStar Wars.xe2x80x9d The system put two speakers up front and two in the rear in an attempt to recreate the sound of movie theaters. Dolby Surround was supplanted by Dolby Pro Logic, which added a front-center channel to improve the reproduction of dialogue, and steering logic to direct the sounds to the appropriate speakers. Like Dolby Surround, the rear surround channel signal is sent to two speakers. It is, however, a mono signal. Dolby Pro Logic is now found on virtually all midline A/V receivers.
Surround sound provides 3-D (3 dimensional) depth to systems. A perspective view of typical surround sound theater system 100 is shown FIG. 1. The movie is typically projected on the screen 112 in a darken room. The audience faces the screen 112 in the theater seating 114. A total of five speakers are shown, left front speaker 102, right front speaker 104, left rear speaker 106, right rear speaker 108, center speaker 118 and sub-woofer 110. The screen typically has a wide aspect ration of 9 to 16 to improve the visual perception of the scene by the audience. The left front speaker 102 and the right front speaker 104 offer the traditional stereo sound. The left rear speaker 106 and the right rear speaker 108 provide stereophonic rear imaging. The sub-woofer offers frequencies (typically below 120 Hz) that provide the rumbles of an explosion or the deep bass in a musical piece. The sound is what puts us in the middle of the action. Take away the sound, and a movie stops being a total experience. It would be like watching xe2x80x9cJurassic Parkxe2x80x9d without the hearing the realism of gigantic dinosaur stomps toward you or feeling the power of an alien spacecraft hovering over the White House in xe2x80x9cIndependence Day.xe2x80x9d
FIG.2 is the home theater 200 counterpart to the surround sound theater of FIG. 1. It is noted that when a movie that was seen at the movie theater is seen at home, it is not as moving as the theater experience. This is in part because of the aspect ratio. In a theater the screen has a wide aspect ratio 9 to 16, or similar. This same movie when broadcast on TV is 4 to 5, unless a letter box format has been chosen. This squarer video image chops off the left and right margins. The peripheral images are missing. The xe2x80x9cimportantxe2x80x9d part if the video is in tact but the peripheral vision input is reduced.
Never the less, the state of the art home theater has the latest surround sound features, which includes speakers in the corners of the TV room. The speakers are labeled left front 202, right front 204, left rear 206 and finally right rear 208. Some surround sound products have sub-woofers 210, and a center channel speaker, 218. The home entertainment equipment providers, such as Sony(trademark), Hitachi(trademark), RCA(trademark) and others provide surround sound using all of the speakers, to simulate real life. An example of a surround sound system available for home theater today is the Dolby Digital(trademark) 5.1 surround technology, which has six independent channels of sound. Digital 5.1 offers five full-frequency, discrete and independent audio channels (front-left 202, front-center 218, front-right 204, right-rear 208 and left rear 206) plus a dedicated low-frequency effects channel that directs bass information to the subwoofer 210. Connected to the TV is an optional digital game unit, 250, such as those available from Sega, Sony and Nintendo.
While home theaters continue to advance to provide the desired realism of the movie theater, home theaters are not without their shortcoming. One shortcoming is ambient light. Unlike the movie theaters of FIG. 1, most home theater rooms have one or more windows 216. These windows allow in light without respect to the TV video being viewed by the TV home seating 214. The ambient outside light through windows 216 often time spoils the home theater realism. For example, if one has a nighttime video on the TV the light from the daytime window spoils the effect. Therefore in a typical TV room it is even more difficult to become engrossed in the total movie experience because of the ambient lighting in the room. Curtains and shades can reduce the ambient lighting interference.
Another shortcoming with home theaters today is the poor aspect ration of home theater TV 212 of 4 to 5. In order to improve the aspect ratio of home theater systems 200, the TV broadcast industry has begun a change from the NTSC PAL or SCAM analog standard to an all-digital HDTV standard. The HDTV standard has the same aspect ratio as movie theaters and will therefore restore the theater experience on HDTV in the home, with respect to the aspect ratio. The home TV will gain back the lost part of the video experience (4 to 5 back to 9 to 16). Never the less, there is a need for encircling visual stimulus in a TV environment in order to better visually engross the viewer with the home theater experience.
But even if the aspect ratio of the TV 212 of the home theater is increased to match the 9 to 16 aspect ratio, the image is still not xe2x80x9crealxe2x80x9d life. In a typical day one receives visual stimulus from all around one""s self. In fact some of the most surprising or frightening things happen just outside the field of view. According there is a need for encircling visual stimulus in a theater in order to have viewers engrossed in the action of multimedia presentations such as movies, games, and television.
Along with the quick advances in home theater systems 200, the PC multimedia equipment also has been advancing. FIG. 3 is a perspective illustration of a typical PC multimedia environment 300. The PC monitor 312 has an aspect ratio of 4 to 5 like TV212. But unlike the TV 212, the PC monitor 312 is setup is for very close viewing, interaction through user input and listening. The user, usually singular, interacts with a keyboard and a pointing device (mouse), where as TV is in general a passive watching experience.
Current PC multimedia equipment has the latest surround sound features. These features included a left front speaker 302, a right front speaker 304, and some advanced PC have optional left rear speakers 306 and right rear speaker 308. Also shown, as an optional feature is the sub-woofers 310. The PC operator in seat 314 sits in front, in such a way that they are at an arm""s length to the PC""s keyboard 316, and optional pointing device, not shown. All of the visual information comes from the PC monitor, 312. There is usually a room window(s) 318, which allows in light. And as described above in the home theater 200, the ambient room light combined with the small screen aspect ration of monitor 312 often distracts from multimedia PC experience. Accordingly, a need exists to provide users of multimedia PC games a more realistic visual experience to over come these problems.
The game market for both TV xe2x80x9cComputerxe2x80x9d Game units such as SEGA(trademark), Nintendo(trademark), Sony(trademark) Play Station and the just described multimedia PC of FIG. 3 continues to grow and has in recent years has surpassed the movie entertainment industry in total dollar sales. The avid game player or xe2x80x9cgamersxe2x80x9d purchase different titles of interactive games and game units 250 or multimedia PC hardware. There is a very large and growing market for xe2x80x9ccomputerxe2x80x9d games. The avid xe2x80x9cgamerxe2x80x9d also has all types of attachments. There are force-feedback joysticks, racing wheels, brake and gas pedals, seats that vibrate, and even guns that interact with the display. Many xe2x80x9cgamersxe2x80x9d spare no money in attempting to better engross themselves in the realism while playing games. A recent gaming accessory is a sensory gaming chair called the Intensor LX 350 Sensory Gaming Chair from Imeron Inc., of North Carolina that provides a seat that vibrates, bounce, tilt and vibrate to add more realism to video game playing.
More recently, xe2x80x9cgamersxe2x80x9d and Internet aficionados have turned to head-mounted displays. FIG. 4A illustrates a person 402 wearing head-mounted display. Examples of head-at mounted display are available at online URL (www.i-glasses.com). This looks like a pair of glasses 404 but has very small displays built into the glasses. These glasses have lenses that allow the viewer to perceive an image that looks similar to a large screen TV or computer monitor. In addition the image is always directly in front of the person whichever way they move their head. These glasses typically have earphones 406 that allow for stereo sound. Not shown is the PC or portable game appliance that supplies the image to the user and also allows for it""s interaction using, for example user buttons. The glasses are typically built so as to shade ambient light. This allows for the viewer to be totally focused on the image without respect to any ambient light induced distractions. FIG. 4B is an elevational top view of the head-mounted display of FIG. 4A. On the right, circle 410 is an ideal top view of the person with the ideal display rendered as 408. Note that the two displays 412 are seen as one image.
The head mounted system 400 is an excellent platform to further engross viewers of multimedia presentations such as games and movies. The head mounted system 400 limits out side stimulus and provides only the intended audio and visual stimulus. However note that this does not provide for any visuals that are intended but outside the normal image area. Accordingly, a need exists for users of head mounted system 400 with a method and apparatus to improve the visual perception outside the normal image area.
Another area of game playing that has expanded greatly over the past few years is hand-held computer games. FIG. 5 is an illustration 500 of a user 502 playing a hand-held computer game 502. These hand-held units made by for example: SEGA(trademark), Nintendo(trademark), and Sony(trademark) are designed to be self-contained. The player 502 interacts with the hand-held 506 with their hands 504. Note that the display 508 and an optional speaker 510 are integrated into the hand-held unit 506. This permits the hand-held unit 506 to be very portable. This allows the ambient noise and light to effect the users enjoyment, making it very difficult to become completely engrossed in the action. For example, during a game where the PC screen depicts a dark nighttime setting the warm and friendly window allows fresh sunlight to spoil the effect. This is of course not xe2x80x9crealxe2x80x9d life. But part of these games is the larger then life setting. They look forward to as much simulated reality as possible. Accordingly there is a need for encircling visual stimulus for PC Gamers in order to become visually engrossed while playing the game. Accordingly, a need exists for to provide users of hand-held game units a method and apparatus to improve the realism during the operation of a hand-held game unit 506.
Briefly, according to the present invention, A method to present auxiliary lighting for enhancing a scene during a multimedia presentation. The method in photonic enclosure comprising the steps of: coupling one or more illumination sources over a network, so that at least one illumination source of the one or more illumination sources is capable of being uniquely addressed; displaying a multimedia presentation; reading a series of preprogrammed illumination identifiers stored in computer readable medium corresponding with the multimedia presentation; interpreting one or more illumination identifiers to set one or more illumination sources for a period of time and to set the address of at least one of the one or more illumination sources; and sending a set signal in response to the interpretation of the one more illumination identifiers to one or more illumination sources over the network.
In another embodiment, a gaming helmet is disclosed as the photonic enclosure used to carry out the above method.
In another embodiment, a hand-held gaming units is disclosed with illumination sources to carry out the above method.
In yet another embodiment, a system and computer readable medium is described to carry out the above method.